DETROIT (WXYZ) — The Avalon Healing Center is a Detroit nonprofit that offers counseling, therapy and medical examinations free of charge to sexual assault survivors. Over Labor Day weekend in the middle of the day, they were vandalized.
An individual can be seen on video surveillance walking up to the building. The words "I love when I'm not asked" were later found spray painted across the building, which sits right across the street from the Detroit Police Department headquarters.
Avalon has had their downtown Detroit location on Bagley Street for about a year and a half and serves as Wayne County's largest sexual assault and anti-human trafficking organization with multiple locations inside.
Senior director of development at the organization MiVida Burrus heard from a staff member that something was spray painted and when staff went out to see the damage, shock was the overwhelming reaction. Others became physically ill.
"I was angry," Burrus said. "When we saw that we were like OK, the message you’re trying to give is it’s OK to rape, and it is not.”
The organization caught the individual on surveillance with two cans of spray paint in his hands, leaving just moments later.
"The person knew exactly what they were doing by putting (the graffiti) right there. They didn’t put it by the employee entrance, they didn’t put it by the front door. They put it where (survivors) park," Burrus said.
Watch surveillance video of the man accused of vandalizing the building below:
Grace French and Rachel Denhollander are both survivors of disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar and advocate for victims. French founded the organization Army of Survivors, a nonprofit that helps brings awareness and advocacy to sexual violence against athletes.
Denhollander wrote the book "What Is a Girl Worth?: My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth about Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics." Nassar survivors just like them helped spearhead the funding to get the Avalon building in Detroit up and running in 2023.
Watch our previous story on the opening of the Avalon Healing Center below:
"When you see a place like Avalon that has done such incredible work on the justice and the healing-front to be targeted this way, it's just an incredibly frightening thing as a survivor and it's incredibly sobering because it's just a very stark reminder of what survivors face if they dare to open their mouths," Denhollander said.
Survivors are outraged that this type of rhetoric is still perpetuated.
"It's really hard to see that that kind of thinking still exists in our culture today," French said.
Burrus says the vandalism takes away funding that could be going to survivors to now looking at hiring security and paying for a way to cover up the message. But it doesn’t deter their mission in the community.
"What I felt and the way I feel is that it was to get a reaction out of us. It was to make us worried and afraid, but we stand unafraid," she said.
The organization is currently looking for a company that could help them remove the messaging and are always looking for donations and volunteers. They celebrate 20 years doing advocacy work in metro Detroit next year and hope to renovate their space.
Detroit police are investigating the incident.
